SEMIOLOGY, SEMIOSPHERE, SEMIOSIS

Abstract

The roots of semiotic thinking go back to the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Greece. Recent history of concepts such as sign, sign-action and sign systems, seems to be dominated by two traditions: the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. In this article we are going to examine Saussure’s dyadic model of the linguistic sign, Yuri Lotman’s ideas on primary and secondary modeling systems and his concept of semiosphere, as well as Peirce’s triadic sign doctrine. Finally, we are going to examine Peirce’s understanding of the process of signaction or semiosis. I argue that through that concept we are able to transcend the boundaries of physics, linguistics and culture.